Kanye West in trouble: Adidas breaks contract with the artist

"Adidas will stop the Adidas Yeezy business with immediate effect." A clear statement of the German sports company on its website, in response to the recent controversy surrounding Kanye West.

"The company has taken the decision to terminate the partnership with Ye immediately, end production of Yeezy branded products, and stop all payments to Ye and his companies. Adidas will stop the Adidas Yeezy business with immediate effect." The company is quite clear about it.

Kanye West's recent anti-Semitic comments are having an immediate effect on many levels. However, the end of his collaboration with Adidas is, without a doubt, the most expensive.

The rapper and the sports brand a successful collaboration for ten years. In fact, in its statement, Adidas revealed that the "short-term negative impact" of this decision will be 250 million dollars by 2022. Forbes even estimates that it will go higher: the amount of money lost could be 400 million by 2023.

Despite the economic impact, Adidas has been clear about its reasoning. "Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech. Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful, and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness."

In case there was any doubt about the property of the Jeezy designs, Adidas states that it's "the sole owner of all design rights to existing products as well as previous and new colorways under the partnership."

The reason for Adidas' decision has come after the shocking speech and behavior of Kanye West in recent weeks.

First, the rapper appeared at Paris Fashion Week wearing a T-shirt that read 'White Lives Matter;' a phrase that counters the 'Black Lives Matter' slogan and is considered an endorsement of white supremacism.

When that incident happened, Adidas already put the agreement with Kanye West in quarantine. However, the rapper kept tweeting racist talking points and the sports firm had to make the decision to cut him loose.

The immediate impact of the decision has also been felt on the stock market, where Adidas dropped 5.6% on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange after the news came out.

Yet, Kanye himself will feel this termination of the contract most of all. He just lost a deal that had made him one of the richest men in the world.

Forbes and other financial media have reported that this termination will push Kanye West out of the billionaires' club.

According to Forbes, the rapper goes from a fortune of 2 billion dollars to 400 million. Something that must surely hurt the star.

The complicated thing for the rapper is that Adidas is not the only firm that is abandoning him.

JP Morgan, GAP, Balenciaga, and the Creative Artists Agency talent agency have also disassociated themselves from Ye.

And as if that weren't enough, the production company MRC has confirmed that it will not broadcast the documentary that it recently made about the rapper's life.